Reblogged from masscommons:

After his heroics in Game 6 of the 2004 American League Championship Series (the “bloody sock” game), and helping the Boston Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years, Curt Schilling will never have to pay for a drink in a bar anywhere in New England for the rest of his life.

However, if his gaming company, 38 Studios…

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Curt Shilling, the Republican who hates big government, is looking for a government bailout.

Forks Over Knives | Do Potatoes Cause Diabetes?.

I met with Bob Plain today and talked about doing some videos to add a little more real information to the political season.  I support Rhode Island’s Future because it has helped tell important stories and get needed information to people about what is going on in Rhode Island politics.  Donate to them and you will be contributing to a resource for quality content on the progressive political scene.

Joyce Carol Oates at Occupy Wall Street Day march | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Reblogged from Life in the Boomer Lane:

Hillary  Clinton, in an event generating even more negative feedback than her 1993 national health care debacle, has appeared in public with minimal makeup, glasses, and au natural hair.  The shocking occurrence took place during an official event in Bangladesh, part of her current diplomatic tour throughout Asia.

In an act that brazenly flaunted common decency and decorum, she allowed the world to see the true state of a sixty-four-year-old woman’s face.

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Go Hillary. I think she looks great.

38 Studios and the ‘Job Creator’ Logic.

LONDON — British prosecutors said on Tuesday that Rebekah Brooks, a former key aide to tycoon Rupert Murdoch and onetime close friend of Prime Minister David Cameron, will face prosecution along with her husband and four others for perverting the course of justice in the hacking scandal that has burrowed into British public life.

There’s always distraction. Frank Bruni at NYT says that Bristol Palin has a new reality show,’Life’s a Tripp’. She should google some child stars and reconsider putting her kid in front of the cameras. He might end up telling a therapist that he feels like he’s being watched. They have treatments for that.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Cesium spikes in Tokyo Bay samples
Contamination linked to Fukushima plant; no immediate threat to health

By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

Sludge samples taken at the mouths of two major rivers emptying into Tokyo Bay showed radioactive cesium contamination linked to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis grew by 1.5 to 13 times since August, a researcher at Kinki University said Monday.

The contamination poses no immediate health risk since no seafood from Tokyo Bay has seen contamination levels exceed the government-set threshold. But close, long-term monitoring of the seabed mud is needed, said Hideo Yamazaki, professor at Kinki University’s Research Institute for Science and Technology.

“Contamination is flowing into the bay from rivers, including the Edogawa River, where cities with high radiation levels like Kashiwa (in Chiba Prefecture) are located upstream,” Yamazaki told The Japan Times.

“Contaminated sludge appears to be . . . accumulating on the bottom at the mouth of the rivers,” he added.

But that’s far away in Japan. No problem here, right? Thomas D. Elias in The Mercury News.com reports from California…

Anyone looking for the most under-reported story of the spring in California need venture no farther than the tall stalks of kelp swaying back and forth just beneath the ocean surface along much of the California coast.

Fish eat kelp; so do small crustaceans near the bottom of the food chain which themselves are later consumed by larger fish that sometimes become food for humans. The largely neglected news story is that it’s been somewhat radioactive off and on for months and it concentrates Iodine 131 isotopes at levels 10,000 times higher than what’s in the surrounding water.

At the same time, steam generator problems have kept the San Onofre nuclear generating station near the Orange-San Diego county line closed for three months, with no reopening in sight as California heads into the summer season of peak electricity consumption. This combination of events ought to have California authorities deeply questioning the state’s heavy reliance on power from both San Onofre and the Diablo Canyon atomic plant on the Central Coast.

There’s no easy way to solve our energy problems, but unless we take it on faith that titanic nuclear plants are unsinkable we have to look at diverse, local and conserving answers.

This is a small, reasonable step that will clear up confusion and save lawyer hours. When Rhode Island finally joins the rest of New England in marriage equality nothing much will change for most of us. But some will miss the controversy. From what I heard at the State House, we should all be very worried about Communists. Let’s legalized gay marriage and end this distraction from our crusade against the Bolshevik threat.

What a difference a year makes. With RIPTA facing a projected $8 million budget shortfall in fiscal 2013, which would translate to about a 25 percent cut in services, schedules and routes without a more stable funding source, a group more than 60 residents and representatives of local businesses, entrepreneurs and advocacy groups descended on the recent House Finance Committee meeting to voice their support for the amendments.[to Public Transit Investment Act (H7581) setting aside 35% of income from license and registration fees for public transit}

After the chairs were filled, attendees spilled into the halls of the Statehouse to watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television. In an an unprecedented show of support for mass transit funding, every person and organization that testified before the committee was in favor of the amendments. Not one voice of opposition was heard in the room.

Paul “Fuzzy” Harrington, president and business agent of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 618, stressed the importance of the bill, saying, “Mass transit is a necessity, not a luxury, to the residents of Rhode Island.

60 people showing up at the State House is pretty good, but shows how few concerned citizens it takes to make a difference. Read the rest here.